Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Happy Birthday, Gary!

2012; Elsevier BV; Volume: 76; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.sab.2012.07.015

1873-3565

Huang Benli,

X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis

Fig. 2. 2007 CSI Award at Xiamen (from left: Benli Huang, Gary Hieftje, Alfredo Sanz Medel). The first time I met Prof. Gary Hieftje was in Orlando, FL, 30 years ago, when I attended the 1982 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, organized by Ramon Barnes. Gary's talk was so interesting that I decided to visit his laboratory after the Winter Conference. However, a big snow storm prevented me from flying there. After that, I never had another chance to visit there. Since then, thanks to the “Open Policy” of China after the “Cultural Revolution”, we met from time to time in various occasions in various countries, including China and the United States. Gary was frequently invited to attend national and international conferences and symposia held in China. For instance, we invited him to give a plenary lecture at the Xiamen International Symposium on Spectrochemistry in 1996 (Fig. 1), and he was invited to the biennial Beijing Conference and Exhibition on Instrumental Analysis (BCEIA) as plenary or keynote speaker several times. In 2007, the Colloquium Spectroscopicum International XXXV was held in Xiamen, China. In that occasion by the unanimous decision of the Continuation Committee, he was the recipient of the CSI Award (Fig. 2). Mrs. Hieftje (Susan) was, as always, an active and enthusiastic companion. Gary hosted at least 20 students, postdocs, and visiting scientists from China in his lab, and has been always very kind, considerate, and helpful to them. On the other hand, most of these Chinese young researchers are outstanding. For instance, Qinhan Jin (QJ) visited Bloomington and collaborated with Gary to improve his Microwave Plasma Torch (MPT); Mao Huang was involved in the application of the computer-aided laser Thomson and Rayleigh scattering technique for measuring spatial distribution of physical parameters, e.g., electron temperature, gas temperature, and electron number density, in plasmas